1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of diagnosing medical conditions and, more specifically, to a method of diagnosing medical conditions employing a prediction market approach.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, conducting a scientifically sound new product or marketing concept test can be an expensive endeavor. Professionally designed concept tests can cost upwards of $6-8,000 per concept tested, and a single focus group can cost around $12,000. Since this is outside the reach of many marketers and small business owners, they instead often must rely upon their own intuition or the opinions of a few friends or colleagues.
Medical diagnoses, especially for infrequently-encountered conditions, can sometimes be difficult for a single practitioner to achieve accurately. In some cases, many different types of individuals will have familiarity with symptoms relating to such conditions. While each individual might have useful insight, sometimes it is difficult to identify a single individual who has a correct understanding of such a condition. Thus, trying to get a correct diagnosis can be time consuming and expensive.
A need, therefore, exists for an accurate and more economical way to diagnose medical conditions.